by
Meredith Martin-MoatsThe Courier Your Messenger For The River Valley

11:21 AM, Monday, May 13 2013 | 3042 views | 0 | 21 | |

In old photo albums and shoe boxes there are several photos of my mother and her mother wearing corsages on Mother’s Day. Usually they’re standing in front of the lilac bush or the deep purple irises, my mother wearing a red corsage and her mother a white one.

I distinctly remember my mother explaining the tradition to me one Sunday morning as we were sitting in the old Church of Christ building on Union Street. Red corsages were worn by women whose mothers were still living, she explained. Women who had lost their mothers wore white.

Looking over at my grandmother, Golda Faye Taylor McElroy — who must have been nearing 70 at the time — I thought about what her white corsage meant. I began to realize that she hadn’t always been my grandmother. She’d once been a young woman with a living mother, and, before that, a young child like myself.

Then I looked around at the rest of the congregation and noticed just how many women were also wearing white flowers, some of them even young women like my mother. Pinned on all their dresses, those simple flowers spoke volumes about the aging process, the continuity and complexity of motherhood, and mysteries we carry with us. I remember wondering if I’d ever wear a red flower of my own. Turns out I never did. My mother died before my own children were born, so these days I wear a white one, too.

Wearing a flower for Mother’s Day isn’t the popular tradition it once was, nor does it date back to the founding of Mother’s Day, which began with an Appalachian woman named Anna Jarvis. In 1858 she called for the creation of “Mother’s Work Days,” to bring people together to improve sanitation and clean up the polluted waterways in the region which were leading to many needless deaths.

Nearly two decades later in Boston, the poet, suffragist, and staunch pacifist, Julia Ward Howe asked mothers to fight for peace. Falling on the heels of the bloody Franco-Prussian War, Howe called for a special day to bring mothers together to organize against further wars.

But it wasn’t until many years later that Mother’s Day became recognized as an official holiday. Anna Jarvis’s daughter, also named Anna, recalled her mother once saying, “I hope and pray that someone, sometime, will found a memorial mother’s day. There are many days for men, but none for mothers.” The younger Jarvis sought to honor her mother’s activism and began to push for such a holiday throughout West Virginia and beyond.

In 1914 President Woodrow Wilson designated the second Sunday in May as the official Mother’s Day. According to historians, it deeply troubled the younger Anna Jarvis that the holiday became commercialized and she actively fought against this commercialization until her death.

Each family has their own way of celebrating Mother’s Day, and subsequent generations will form traditions of their own. What about you? Do you wear a corsage? Do you visit cemeteries for Decoration Days on Mother’s Day or engage in community work? I’d love to hear your stories. You can visit me online, and find more information about Julia Ward Howe, both Anna Jarvises, and photos of corsages past, at www.boileddownjuice.com.